The official website of Gint Aras, Finalist 2016 CWA Book Award

Tag Archives: relationships

Gint Aras is leading a writing workshop this spring, 2017, in Oak Park’s famous Arts District. The workshop is open to writers of any level, aged 16 or older, and registration is on a first-come, first-served basis, maxing out at 8 students.

Classes begin on April 7th and meet weekly each Friday night thereafter, from 6:30-8:30 PM, at the Upstairs Apartment and Lounge (see photos below) above The Buzz Cafe in Oak Park, IL. The Buzz is only steps from the Austin Blue Line Station, easily accessible via the Eisenhower Expressway.

The course focuses on craft. However, Gint will lead students though strategies for pitching writing, identifying markets, maintaining an internet presence, and he’ll share knowledge of Chicago’s growing, exciting independent publishing and book-selling community. The final meeting on May 26th will feature a reading at a public venue in Chicago. Expect surprise guests!

To register for the course, click here and send him a message, including your name. You must have a PayPal account to register.

Details:

Prose Writing Workshop, with Gint Aras

Friday nights, 6:30-8:30, from April 7-May 26

Upstairs Apartment and Lounge, Buzz Cafe

905 S. Lombard, Oak Park, IL

Open to writers of any level, aged 16 or older

Registration ends after 8 students have registered

Cost: $420

Gint Aras is the critically acclaimed author of The Fugue (Tortoise, 2016), finalist for the 2016 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. The novel was called “magisterial” by the Chicago Tribune and a “masterpiece of literary fiction” by Centered on Books. His other prose and translations have appeared in the St. Petersburg Review, Quarterly West, Antique Children, Criminal Class Review, Curbside Splendor, ReImagine, STIR Journal, Heavy Feather Review, and he is a former contributing and section editor at The Good Men Project. Aras earned an MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York, and a BA in English and American Literature from the University of Illinois.

I published an essay at The Good Men Project yesterday. Titled Running Into Your First Love, it has to do with a New Year’s Eve party, and my chance run in with a woman I had been crazy about as a teen. The experience led to all sorts of meditations which I’ve examined. I hope you’ll check it out.

This is one of those pieces of writing which, while straightforward for the reader, has a long history and a peculiar difficulty behind it for the writer. I first imagined writing it over a half-decade ago. I imagined how it would sound and what I would do about it, but I never found the right words. I realize now it was a question of courage (it is so often a question of courage!). Could I allow myself to feel, again, that torrent of emotion that came when I was a teenager in love? Could I face the consequences of that torrent? What if it revealed something I had been denying? How would I deal with the memories of embarrassment and rejection?

Writing is crazy torture. The liberation it offers only continues to surprise and excite me.